


one night will remind you (how we touched and went our separate ways)

by violenteer



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, I love these two with my whole heart, M/M, Small Towns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 19:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21124373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violenteer/pseuds/violenteer
Summary: “Can I ask you a question?” Richie murmurs, leaning in.He’s serious and it usually sets Eddie on edge when he’s serious so he waits for Eddie to slap his hand away and back up.But, see, Eddie’s high too, so instead of doing what he always has, he stays in place instead and after a fraught moment of deliberation, nods.“Have you had your first kiss yet?”





	one night will remind you (how we touched and went our separate ways)

The butt of the smoke is going out, the cast of its orange ass no longer visible among the pale faces glancing its way. Fine films of white filter up and out, trailing their feet along the halos of heads below. Its winter; the streets are iced out, snow piled high on every median within the city. There’s that dank, rotting, sulfuric smell coming from the dam that runs parallel to the main street in Derry.

It makes everything seem like it’s been belly-up in the water for weeks. Both Eddie and Richie have become accustomed to the smell, but still, it rankles when it comes around. 

“I don’t know why we couldn’t just go to your parents’ place. You know they wouldn’t care.” Eddie says.

His voice has dropped off some since puberty swept through, but his pitch still lingers in the upper levels. His nose is scrunched, brows furrowed. Richie gazes at him through the smoke. More than so many things, all Richie wants to do is swipe his thumb over those hard spots in Eddie’s expression to smooth them out. 

But he’s been wanting to do that for years now, so he knows how to find his control.

“They probably would have joined in.” Richie cuts back. “Plus it’s nice out. Winter’s in, summer’s out. This is straight up cozy weather.”

He waggles his brows a little for effect. Eddie scoffs and reaches for the dying joint, which Richie hands him easily.

“My fucking balls are gonna freeze off.” Richie’s friend tells him. 

Richie wants to say something ridiculous. Something like, ‘I can keep ‘em warm for ya,’ or ‘maybe if they were in my mouth…’ but neither even comes close to reaching his throat, so all he does is shrug.

“I’m pretty sure you weren’t using them, anyway.” His chapped lips crack when he grins. 

Eddie takes a drag of the joint and then coughs a little on the exhale. He smiles, sardonic and bitter, and says, “Ha fucking ha, very funny.” 

It’s the same shit they always talk about. Nothing. But the weed’s kicking in a little bit, and Richie thinks he can see a sharper edge in Eddie’s expression, so he backs down some. They’re on the bridge overlooking the dam. Nobody’s around. Richie took his car, picked Eddie up. It’s a Saturday and all the other Losers are busy. And Richie was climbing up the walls in his house.

“Hey, I could be wrong, right? Maybe Eds is getting it in seven ways from Sunday or whatever the fuck.” Richie likes that he can hide how he feels in those words.

It makes him feel like he has more control over his emotions than he actually does. He almost feels like he doesn’t have a crush on Eddie at all. 

“One, that’s disgusting, both because of the amount of fluid exchange implied, and because you think I’d bang anyone in Derry,” he pauses, “and _two_-,“ but he doesn’t get so far as the next word before Richie cups his hand over Eddie’s mouth.

“Can I ask you a question?” Richie murmurs, leaning in. 

He’s serious and it usually sets Eddie on edge when he’s serious so he waits for Eddie to slap his hand away and back up.

But, see, Eddie’s high too, so instead of doing what he always has, he stays in place instead and after a fraught moment of deliberation, nods.

“Have you had your first kiss yet?” Richie wonders.

Eddie tilts his head where he’s still being physically shushed and thinks about it. He doesn’t think so, no. Not yet. They’re in their junior year of high school and for some reason, the thought of kissing another person hasn’t crossed Eddie’s mind in a big way until right then and there. 

He gently peels Richie’s hand off his face and holds his wrist. And then he says, “No.”

Richie hums. He starts patting himself down looking for that other joint he rolled, lighter clinking in his pocket with some spare change and his keys. A car looks like it’s about to drive up the bridge, and both Richie and Eddie tense, but eventually it turns at the fork and charges through Derry’s woods.

Twin breaths leave them both, loud and dramatic.

“I guess I haven’t really cared.” Eddie tells him. 

Richie lights up and takes a mean drag. His throat instantly rebels, but he holds it in like he was taught. His head feels like a balloon on his shoulders, and suddenly, out of the corner of his eye Richie imagines something bulbous and red, and floating nearer and nearer with each second….

But when Richie blinks, the red is gone. _Never there to begin with_, he tells himself.

He doesn’t cough after, but it’s a near thing.

“Is that weird?” Eddie asks him.

Richie pins him with a look. “Do you think it’s weird?” 

“I didn’t ask myself, ass-for-brains.” Eddie whips back.

He examines his hand where Richie’s passed the joint over and notices that he’s shaking. It really is cold out, local temperature dipping a little below the forties. Wind chill adds in, too, and if you account for the lack of humidity…. Eddie does the math in his head and shivers.

“Are you cold?” Richie sounds shocked. 

“I already fucking told you that.” Eddie says.

His voice isn’t angry though. Not when it’s wrapped around the smoke. Not when he’s looking at Richie’s wild, dark hair that tinges gold where the streetlight hits. Not when he meets Richie’s wide, beautiful eyes and stares because he’s too stoned to think better of it.

“Come on,” Richie orders, already starting to walk off.

They make it into his car and get the heat going. Richie shuts his grates off to blast all that warm energy into Eddie’s face and get his blood flowing like normal again.

Twenty minutes later and Eddie’s cheeks are pink, he’s smiling, there’s something low playing on the radio that sounds like the blues.

“You never answered me, you know.” Eddie reminds.

Richie makes a face. “I always answer you. You hate it. I never shut the fuck up.”

“About the kiss, idiot. I knew all that already.” 

When Richie really looks at Eddie all he wants to do is kiss him. Be the first to kiss him, tell him he wants to be the very last. Kiss him everywhere, from his lips to his cheek to his jaw to his neck and below. Everywhere below. Everywhere Richie can realistically reach. Everywhere. Everything. Richie wants it all. He goes to bed at night and he fantasizes about it.

He shuts his eyes in trigonometry and it’s right there waiting for him. Eddie, his very best friend, and all the ways Richie should never ever want him.

“Let you in on a little secret? I haven’t had mine yet, either.”

It’s an unexpected confession. Eddie would have imagined that Richie got his first kiss out of the way as soon as possible.

“Wait, really?” Eddie’s voice is reedy.

He’s giving himself away, but Richie doesn’t really see it. Too concerned with hiding his own cards.

“Really really, Eddie Spaghetti. No one in Derry’s had the absolute pleasure of taking a bite outta these babies.”

He points to his lips and Eddie grins, but he looks kind of scared as he does it.

“A _bite_? What’s wrong with you?” He laughs halfway through the question.

Richie laughs, too, a little hysterical because he’s really high.

“I think lip-biting would be hot. Sue me.” He huffs.

The joints are all smoked and made into ash beneath the tires of Richie’s car. The both of them are in the exosphere, looking out at Saturn where it perches way off; they’re under the influence. Uninhibited. Just the two of them. 

“I guess it’s better than spitting in someone’s mouth or something.”

Images of the leper pop up in Eddie’s mind, a bad habit he could never shirk. He shivers again, but this time he’s warm as hell. It’s a different feeling. Richie knows it, too.

“That would be too kinky for me.” Richie agrees.

“Is there such a thing, trash-mouth?”

They chuckle. The song changes and Eddie immediately recognizes it. Journey. Separate ways, worlds apart.

“Quiz me.” Richie challenges.

Eddie rises to it. He turns in the passenger seat so that his knees are bunched up against the armrest and he’s looking right at Richie. 

“Okay. French-kissing?”

“Is that a joke? Hell yeah.”

“Really deep French-kissing?" 

Richie pauses. “How deep?”

“Like, tongue-in-throat.”

“I feel like that’s not possible.”

“It totally is.” Eddie shoots back.

“Okay, so sure. I’ll try it. Just to gross you out.”

Eddie’s face goes sour but he laughs.

They look at each other for a while. Richie maps Eddie’s face right down to his cute little chin and defined jawline. Thinks about booping Eddie’s nose just to watch him get pissy. Eddie looks right back at him, but he doesn’t try to say anything.

Richie gets this crazy idea that he should tell Eddie how he feels finally. Maybe it would go over better right here and now, in his car on this bridge miles away from civilization. Miles away from their friends and family and responsibilities. Out here… out here, maybe the two of them are free.

“Keep going.” Richie whispers.

Eddie blinks. He nods belatedly. Looks all around the car and then back down at Rich sitting one foot away.

“Would you ever kiss a guy?” Eddie asks him quietly.

“What do you mean?” Richie asks.

His chest feels like ice. One good punch, and it would fucking shatter.

Eddie drops his eyes and starts fidgeting with some of the dials on the radio. 

“Never mind.” He says. 

“No, what did you-,” but Eddie cuts him off.

“I take it back.”

“Don’t take it back.”

Eddie looks confused again. Like out on the bridge when they weren’t even that gone.

“Why not?” 

Richie’s grasping at straws. Eddie’s gone all defensive. 

“Just ask me again.” Richie tries.

“What? No.” Eddie looks downright uncomfortable.

“Okay.” Richie deflates.

Eddie’s still not really looking at him, so Richie opens his side-compartment and rifles through his CD collection. He has a lot of rock. Most of it’s hand-me-downs from his mom and dad, but some of the CD’s are gifts from his friends. There’s one Heart CD Bev gave him that Richie will only listen to when he really misses her. He keeps it at the back. His fingertips are trailing over it now.

She would know how to diffuse this situation. She would know how to make things better. Richie was never good at gluing shit back together, no. He was always better at making stuff fall apart. 

It’s dead quiet for a few more minutes until Eddie unscrews his bottle of water he left in the car and takes a drink.

Richie watches him drink. He watches Eddie’s Adam’s apple move as he swallows. He opens his mouth and speaks before he has any more chance to think about what might happen after.

“Yeah.” He says simply.

Eddie finishes and screws the cap back on his water. “Yeah what?”

He sounds kind of angry.

“Yeah.” Richie repeats, looking at him dead-on. “I would kiss a guy.”

His skin is prickling all over with these tiny red welts that make him start to sweat. Richie can feel this great big spotlight shining down on him, ripping into his self-consciousness and making a home down there. He feels like the biggest freak in town. He feels awful.

Eddie’s jaw is slack and his eyes are big and so circular they remind Richie of golf balls and he doesn’t even seem to be breathing.

“Wrong answer?” Richie asks, a little scared now himself. 

Eddie shakes his head, but he doesn’t say anything. He just keeps looking. And looking. And then he looks through the windshield at the rest of the bridge.

“I don’t want to kill your car battery. We should probably go home soon.” Is what, eventually, Eddie comes up with.

The floor is out from under Richie and he’s falling through endless dark. His vision is cut and all he knows is that his heart is sinking, sinking, sinking to the bottom of the ocean. He can’t find it from where it leapt out of his ribs. Richie can’t do anything but feel what he’s feeling now. And the only way he can describe it is to say that it’s worse. 

“Yeah, okay. I’m sure your mommy’s wondering where her Eddie-bear is anyway.” Richie responds.

He’s not in it. His tone is flat. He puts the car in drive and heads home.

Eddie doesn’t even fire something back.

Richie’s so mad the whole way. He’s mad at himself for answering the question. He’s mad at Eddie for fucking _asking_. He’s so mad he didn’t just drop it in the first place and leave everything alone. Richie’s been pretending for so long that he doesn’t care. And the one chance Eddie gives him, the one test he administers, Richie fails. He fails and he shows how desperate he is. He shows Eddie that he’s a queer. That he’s weird and they shouldn’t even talk, probably, because the rest of Derry can smell it on you when you have something to hide.

They figure it out sooner than later. And no one wants to be in the blast-radius of the assholes that live in Derry. Especially not after what the Losers have already been through.

He fucked up. Richie fucked up. He can never keep his mouth shut.

His fingers are tapping unsteadily on the rim of his steering wheel, discordant, manic. If he’s ever had a panic attack in his life, this is probably the biggest one. 

Richie and Eddie are pulled up at the curb by Eddie’s house in ten minutes flat. Derry is a small town. It doesn’t take long to get from one place to the next.

Eddie didn’t say anything the whole car ride home, and he still doesn’t say anything now. He just gathers his coat up, throws his scarf around his neck, and sighs. He chews his lip some, but Richie doesn’t notice.

“Thanks for tonight.” Eddie says politely.

Richie doesn’t look at him when he says you’re welcome. 

“Don’t give your mom a heart attack, Spaghetti, I don’t think she’d be able to come back from it. Go inside.”

Eddie’s heard so much shit about his mom that at this point it just goes over his head. He nods and opens his door, one foot on the pavement, and then he just stops.

Richie needs to go home in the next five seconds or he’s going to start crying at Eddie. He knows himself, and he knows that he really can’t keep it together for longer than a minute, max.

“Is there someone out there or someth-,” 

“Can you shut your lights off for a second?” Eddie asks.

Richie cocks his head, clearly perplexed, but he does it.

One second the tree-line is lit up, and the next they’re in a world of black. The only lights Eddie and Richie have are coming from the speedometer and the gas meter and all those other little meters on the driver’s side.

“Okay.” Richie draws the word out.

He’s momentarily shaken out of his impossible melancholy. Right now he’s just curious. Anxious, too.

Eddie shuts his door and pulls himself back inside until he and Richie are pretty much sharing breath. Richie doesn’t even see it, but he feels when Eddie’s hand is crawling over the back of his neck, pulling him forward really gently. 

“Eds?” Richie asks.

“I would, too.” Eddie confesses. 

They kiss over the sound of static radio and a neighbor’s dog barking about Richie’s prehistoric engine. They kiss and Richie has no idea what to do with himself, with his hands, with anything at all. He reaches over and puts his fingers, clammy and hot, on Eddie’s shoulder.

Richie opens his mouth to bite Eddie’s bottom lip. He feels shocky. He feels like a fictional character. He feels realer than he’s ever felt before in all his sixteen years of living.

Eddie pulls away to breathe and Richie follows, kissing his cheek. Kissing the corner of his eye. Stopping short when Eddie moves further out of reach.

“Richie?” His voice is so small.

So sweet and cute. And it’s Richie’s, right now. Right here, in his car, on this street, so late at night.

Richie grunts and clambers forward to kiss Eddie again, and Eddie goes oh-so-willingly, a choked sound bubbling up to the surface.

Their first kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> not even ONE MORE GAY is dying on my watch


End file.
